The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle or VoMi (Coordination Centre for Ethnic Germans[1]) was an NSDAP agency founded to manage the interests of the ethnic Germans (population of German ethnicity living outside the borders of Nazi Germany).

In 1941 the VoMi was upgraded to an SS Main Office (Hauptamt) with control over all VoMi personnel and field offices. In June 1941 VOMI was absorbed into the office of the Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of German Ethnic Stock (RKFDV) run by Reichsführer-SSHeinrich Himmler. The RKFDV, as an SS-controlled organization, had the authority to say who was German, where ethnic Germans could live, and what populations should be cleared or annihilated in order to make room for the German settlers. As RKFDV chief, Himmler authorized the SS-Einsatzgruppen and other SS police units to round up and kill Jews, Slavs and Roma.

("Organization and Personnel") This was managed by an SD officer. It dealt with SS and non-SS personnel within the Volksdeutsche. In the later period of the war, Amt II's importance increased as it was responsible for allocating Volksdeutsche to the Reich Labor Service.

("Finances, Economics and Administration") It was responsible for financing VoMi projects and distributing funds to Volksdeutsche. It was the only department that remained under complete control of the Nazi State and not the Allgemeine SS.

("Office of ethnic Germans within the Reich") This office looked after the welfare of ethnic Germans that had been allowed to settle within the borders of Germany. It also assessed potential candidates for settlement grading them on their ethnicity, politics and skills. However, Amt VI, although tasked with the welfare of Volksdeutsche, worked closely with the Gestapo and the SD of the RSHA.

("Culture and science") This section was engaged in collating and archiving the cultural history of resettled Volksdeutsche. The department also acted as a curator for artifacts, treasure and documents belonging to ethnic Germans.

("Political office of German ethnic groups") The SS considered this to be the most important department within VoMi as it provided the political leadership for ethnic Germans within the Third Reich and occupied Europe. Amt IX had several sub divisions, these included domestic affairs, relations between ethnic Germans and the Nazi Party, affairs between foreign states and the Third Reich regarding ethnic Germans and liaisons with the Nazi Foreign Ministry.

A VoMi unit, Sonderkommando R (Russland), institutional successor to Einsatzgruppe D in the Transnistria area, carried out numerous massacres of Jews during the first half of 1942. The victims were deportees from Rumanian-controlled territory, it being Marshal Ion Antonescu's policy to racially "cleanse" the Rumanian nation. His preferred technique was to expel them to German-controlled territory and have the responsible SS/ Police units exterminate them. Many of these Jews were passed back and forth for weeks before a mix of Sk-R units and ethnic German Selbstschutz militia killed them.

Most of these murders occurred in the County (Judetul) of Berezovca, where ethnic Germans, distributed among 40 or so villages, made up 40% of the population. Sk-R was commanded by SS-Standartenfuher Horst Hoffmeyer, a senior VoMi officer. His HQ was in Landau, located west of the River Bug. Apparently, the unit was divided into seven local offices, three of which were:

Worms - commanded by SS-Obersturmführer Streit

Lichtenfeld - SS-Obersturmführer Franz Liebl

Rastatt - SS-Hauptsturmführer Rudolf Hartung

Liebl's unit, for example, was responsible for the massacre of 1,200 Jews at Suha Verba in early June 1942.

Slightly more detail on this can be found in Andrej Angrick's paper in Yad Vashem Studies XXVI (1998), pp 232–234. Perhaps oddly, Radu Ioanid's The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies Under the Antonescu Regime, 1940-1944 does not cover Sk-R, nor does Valdis O. Lumen's book dedicated to VoMi.

The memorandum refuted claims that organizations like VoMi had no knowledge that Jews were being murdered en masse in the extermination camps. The note is also an example of the use of the Nazi euphemism "evacuation" for Jews that were being murdered in The Holocaust.[4]